


Near And Yet So Far

by lindsey_grissom



Series: Crystal Heart [13]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-18
Updated: 2010-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Jack makes his way 'home' but doesn't quite get there.</i>  Part of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/3978">Crystal Heart</a> 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Near And Yet So Far

He should be dancing on air. Should be so full of happiness that he does not care that he has spent almost a year rebuilding an Earth he wasn't ever meant to see. Because finally, _finally_, he found the right moment to leave. To find his way back to _his_ Doctor and _his_ Rose.

But he is not celebrating. Oh he is on Earth. That much he does know. He is even in the right city; Cardiff. But most definitely not the right time.

He knows this era, loved it once; the dreams of the naive. The nineteenth century, he does not dare move to find out the exact date. Movement greater than the unsteady rise and fall of his chest might just break him.

He will not even look at his watch. A present from Rose so many years into the future. But he knows he has sat here for hours.

The sun had barely begun to rise when he arrived, it looks to be doing the action again.

A new day in an old world. He cannot count the number of times he has tried his Vortex Manipulator, but nothing yet has happened. Time seems determined to keep him here.

It's funny, but he cannot seem to care. And isn't that an odd feeling? Or not feeling. Because he thinks he should feel something. He _knows_ he should at least feel anger towards something. But he feels nothing. Not even the physical discomfort of the rain soaking him a second time. Perhaps he should be scared of that.

He even knows _why_ he doesn't feel. Because hours ago he lost himself to the grief and fell into that dark hole in his mind.

Now his body is acting under instructions from his brain that is working just fine, and is rather more efficient actually, now that his heart is no longer getting in the way.

His mind is busy replaying images of the TARDIS disappearing in front of him, and the rain is bringing back memories of Lithnia, but it's like watching a movie without sound, because everything is missing emotion and he is simply looking at cold hard facts.

Rose and the Doctor abandoned him. No attempts were made to recover his, presumed dead, body. He is a pathetic idiot for ever thinking things could change. He forgot to remember his promise to James. He won't do it again.

He has no doubts that ever finding the Doctor again is implausible. Getting the times right would be too hard to ever be possible. Thankfully, he cannot feel the grief over that just yet.

He will stick around, of course, because that is the practical thing to do. Apparently he is going to live out his life here now. It could be worse. It can always be worse. He remembers that lesson now.

Tendrils of aching despair begin to slide through his body, and he slams his walls back into place. This felt exactly like Lithnia and he will not lose himself the way he did then. It is enough that his heart has shattered again. He will not deepen the wounds it has already begun to reopen. He cannot afford to bleed out. There isn't anyone here to seal him up.

He has tried, over the years, several ways of surviving. He has tried accepting his feelings, tried using them for his own gains, has tried embracing them, developing them and giving them away. He is only worse off for the attempts. So now he has a new plan. A different plan.

He won't feel anything. It isn't just ignoring his emotions, that would never work. Now, he just won't feel. His heart is already too broken right now for anything but the deepest pain and even that he can no longer feel.

He knows his mistake after James; he healed it as well as he could. He will not do that this time. He'll leave the pieces as they fell. He has no use for a heart that breaks.

They'll be no more pain this way. No more false joy or tainted hope. Just the blankness of nothing.

He knows he can survive quite well like that. Has, while deciding, just found himself somewhere dry to spend the day. And he can fake the feelings. Before the Doctor he did that quite well too.

And if he tries a bit harder, laughs that much louder, no one will ever know the difference. Overtime, he might even convince himself.

The TARDIS key hangs heavy around his neck. A good luck charm, or so they told him on that future Earth. And he had nodded, laughed, agreed. He is alive after all, when he really probably should be dead.

They left him with it. Did not take it from him. Abandoned then, forgotten. But not thrown out. Maybe that is why he keeps trying to find them. And he will keep trying, even though it will make no difference and they will be forever out of his reach.

He will keep on searching, because he is empty and pathetic and he has absolutely nothing else to do and that, he thinks, may just be the death of him.

 

**End.**


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